Bramfield Woods - Field Trip - 30/03/21

We had our first session of the year at Bramfield Woods on Tuesday night.

The day had been mild at around 24 degrees, but with no cloud cover for the evening.

The temperature did remain fairly respectable even after a few hours of darkness. At around 11pm the big bright Moon started to rise and by midnight it felt a little cooler, 11 degrees when I headed home, but in my short 15 minute journey home it had dropped 3 degrees.

The session started catastrophically with one of the generators smoking plumes of white smoke, oil I suspect getting into the fuel.. I decided to turn that off after a few curse words.

I had already set up 3 traps a bit further round in the woodland, so I packed up the two traps that I couldn't run, and drove round to the other 3 lights... it was dark, 'What the hell' ran through my mind. upon inspection, the other generator has a fuel leak (Both of these problems did not show up after servicing them last month and leaving them running for an hour each, so frustrating).

I managed to limp the fuel leak generator on until midnight, by simply restarting it once it had cut out from fuel starvation, bearing in mind that this was happening every 10 minutes! I was exhausted to say the least!

The long and the short of it is that my father in law will take a look at both of them soon, and i've had to buy a brand new generator.

Moths... yes where were we, around 300 turned up to the 3 lights I ran, of 24 species from what I wrote down.

Best moths were a single Agonopterix ocellana (to Trevor's trap), lots of fresh Frosted Greens and a rather faded Dotted Chestnut.

After the stress and petrol fumes giving me a headache on the way home, it was well worth seeing some early season moths that I don't often see in my garden.

Below is the list that we managed on the trip.

Catch Report - Bramfield Woods - Central Herts - 30/03/21 - 3 traps - 1x 125w Clear MV Trap,1x 160w MBT Trap, Quad 20w Wemlite + 15w Actinic tube Trap

Macro Moths

Brindled Pug 10

Chestnut 25

Clouded Drab 2

Common Quaker 100+

Dotted Chestnut 1 

Engrailed 2

Frosted Green 10 

Hebrew Character 5

Oak Beauty 3

Pine Beauty 4

Red-green Carpet 1 

Satellite 6

Small Quaker 180+

Twin-spotted Quaker 5

Yellow Horned 6

Micro Moths

Acleris notana/ferrugana 4

Agonopterix ocellana 1

Alucita hexadactyla 1 

Diurnea fagella 50+

Dyseriocrania subpurpurella 30+

Mompha jurassicella 1

Pammene giganteana 6

Phyllonorycter ulmifoliella 1 

Tortricodes alternella 2 

125w MV Robinson Trap under flowering Sallow
160w MBT Trap
Alucita hexadactyla
Frosted Green

Pammene giganteana
Phyllonorycter ulmifoliella
Pine Beauty

Quad 20w Wemlite Trap with 15w Actininc Tube
Red Chestnut


Yellow Horned